Many are concerned about climate change and one of the most important
climate research problems is understanding the relationship between
oceans and the global climate. A significant challenge facing
climatologists and meteorologists today is making sense of the vast
and continually increasing amount of data generated by earth
observation satellites, radars, and sensor networks. These data are
increasingly available in high-resolution image formats and must be
incorporated correctly into climate change models. Timely and proper
interpretation of these data can provide advanced warnings for severe
weather, enabling action that minimizes the resulting damage and
saving lives. Computerized systems for cross-modality image query,
mining, and recovery by content are becoming essential. This project
will form an international multi-disciplinary virtual organization to
develop an efficient data modeling cross mining and retrieval system
for satellite images and other sensor data applied to mesoscale ocean
structures. The team will take a novel data-driven approach, designing
an image retrieval system using advanced knowledge management and
statistical learning techniques and developing advanced technologies
for large-scale image and sensor network data management.

These developments will advance the fields of computer and information
sciences, meteorology, and climatology and the open-source platform
will benefit the researchers and developers of remote sensing
systems. This system will enable real-time monitoring of severe
weather and climate change and the discovery and analysis of the
evolution of various ocean phenomena. This project will increase our
knowledge of atmospheric and oceanic circulations and interactions,
improving our understanding of the mechanism of climate change and
clarifying the potential for environmental catastrophes and economic
boondoggles. Through active collaboration with foreign researchers
and institutions across the Atlantic and the Pacific, the virtual
organization will coordinate and streamline research efforts while
increasing the value of available resources and developing a graduate
student exchange program.